Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 28300 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 142(@200wpm)___ 113(@250wpm)___ 94(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 28300 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 142(@200wpm)___ 113(@250wpm)___ 94(@300wpm)
It had taken him some time to grow out of the leather cut, but it had happened. They had all been given new ones, marking them as one of their own.
Anthony didn’t touch the jacket. On top of it, Lash slid a photograph album across his lap.
“Open it, look at the pictures, and I want you to really see them.”
Anthony didn’t want to do this. He knew exactly what his dad was trying to do, and he wasn’t going to be surprised. The Skulls MC had grown more than just being a club intent on revenge.
He opened the book and stared at the pictures. A lot had been destroyed when an attack had happened on the clubhouse. The few pictures had been saved by sheer miracle.
Some of the people, Anthony had never gotten to know. They had lost people on both sides.
He saw a picture of Murphy before he got his scars. Anthony knew even his own mother, Angel, had gotten scars of her own. She hadn’t come out of any of the attacks unscathed.
Lash didn’t speak, and Anthony turned the pages. It wasn’t an overly large book, but inside, he saw the memories as well as the pain.
By the time he got to the last page, silence filled the room. He waited for his dad to talk. To say something.
Lash took the book, put it on the coffee table, and then gripped the leather cut in his hands. “I remember when you were just a boy and you got this. Your mother could never take it off you. You wore it with your head held high. You were so proud of what it meant. You were my firstborn son. I knew the moment you put this on, you were going to follow in my footsteps.”
“Dad?”
“Shut up,” Lash said. “You listen, I know you’re good at that. Do you think I don’t know what’s going on in your head? That I’m too stupid to see what you want to do?”
Anthony stayed silent. He hadn’t thought his dad was stupid, just busy dealing with everything else. “Do you think that it’s not something I want to do as well?”
Anthony turned to his dad, a little surprised.
Lash was always levelheaded. Always seeing the bigger picture. Putting the club first before his own needs. It was what he did all the time.
“Yeah, I can tell you that from the moment I learned the truth of what happened, all I wanted to do was kill.” Lash held his hands open. “It’s what I’m good at. It’s what I’m used to doing.” He pointed at the book. “Back then, I wouldn’t have even hesitated. I would’ve been on my bike, and all of them would have been dead. No questions asked. The whole club would have. They hurt one of our own.”
For the first time in his life, Anthony wanted to speak. He wanted to reason with his father, but knew he had to be silent.
Gritting his teeth, he fucking hated this. Staying silent was his fucking armor. It was easy. Now all he wanted to do was argue, to make his dad see reason.
“I know it’s what you want to do. You want to make the Monster Dogs nothing more than a fleeting memory. All of them dead and gone. It can happen. I’ve seen it.”
Anthony knew of the Savage Brothers MC. It had been done. There were other clubs as well, but none had been done quite as well as the Savage Brothers MC. The only surviving members of that club were Butch and Lacey.
“Every single person in that club would have to die,” Lash said. “The men, the women, all the kids. All of it would have to go, to be wiped out. None of it could come back to The Skulls. You may see me as a weak prez, Anthony, and to be honest, I don’t give a fuck if you do or not. I’ve known true loss. I’ve looked death in the face more times than I can count, and I’ve had to bury brothers as well as women. You were a kid. There is a choice here. The right one and the wrong one. You want to take on the Monster Dogs MC, and I know you do, but doing them the wrong way will cost in the long term. Imagine a life where Daisy doesn’t exist.”
Anthony’s hands clenched.
“I’ve sat by your mother’s bedside too many times and had to think about that. I’ve lived through her attempting to take her own life. Trust me, Anthony, when I say this. I will make sure you never see Daisy again before I let you take the club down a path that I know will destroy us all. This isn’t about you. It isn’t about Tabitha, and it isn’t about revenge. This is you and me, and you will either fall in line or I will have to make a choice. Do not make me make that choice. You will not win. Not against me.”